by Anya Seton
Ursula’s thoughts were ever mirrored on her face; though she dared not speak, her spurt of hope showed itself plain to Anthony who was both touched and vexed at the naiveté. He drew off his gold embroidered gloves and tossed them to a hovering retainer. He adjusted the set of his jeweled sword belt. “The Queen’s Grace,” he said gravely, “has promised me a peerage, to be conferred upon the occasion of her marriage. A viscountcy, for which I will select the title of Montagu, in deference to my paternal grandmother’s family. I shall thereafter ponder well before I choose a wife suitable to be Viscountess Montagu, mistress of Cowdray—and mother to my babes.”
Ursula understood that she had been rebuked, but all of Anthony’s speech was so startling that she was distracted from its reason. She spoke quickly. “Aye—should have guessed—Master Julian said Her Majesty’d reward you, sir, and you deserve it—but what marriage—the Queen’s, I mean—to whom? Is’t decided?”
Anthony’s face darkened, he bent his head for his servant to adjust the black velvet hat with its sable mourning feather. “It is decided,” he said, “though not generally known.” Jesu—but there’ll be an uproar, he added to himself. He gave the puzzled Ursula a polite nod, then went to the head of the stairs to meet new arrivals.
The priory’s small Hall, which had once been the monks’ refectory, was jammed that evening with the assortment of guests Anthony had invited, ostensibly to attend a revel in honor of the Feast Day. He had hired extra minstrels and commissioned John Heywood to be master of the revel. Heywood’s zealous Catholicism had brought him great danger in the last reign. He had fled to Europe but was now returned to a warm welcome from Queen Mary, who had been delighted by him in her girlhood when he had been something of a court jester to her father. Heywood, a robust man in his fifties, was a wit. He could also sing, write masques or eulogies, and his merry eye and ready tongue disguised a shrewd intelligence. Anthony had selected him for an experiment this night. They had together, most carefully, determined on the method.
Sir Thomas Wyatt remained near Celia as the guests drifted in. He had drunk a great deal of Anthony’s best Canary, and was becoming a trifle maudlin as he took the lute and began to sing madrigals which had been composed by his father. “Vengeance shall fall on thy disdain, Thou shalt but gain a constant pain,” he sang, and tried to squeeze Celia’s waist. Since it was well armored with bone stays she merely laughed at him. He was in his thirties and seemed old to her, especially as his fashionable crimson velvet hat could not conceal the sparseness of his hair. She knew vaguely that he had a wife in Kent and lived in a castle called Allington. She enjoyed his compliments, and kept an eye on her aunt, for Ursula was, however fleetingly, acting as hostess for Sir Anthony. Celia, anxious to please her, was watching for the signals which meant “Important guests—get up and curtsy!”
“Ah . . . cruel maiden,” said Wyatt, stroking her arm. “You’ll not listen . . . I know another song for you.” He tightened a lute string and began in a loud tenor, “O Celia, the wanton and fair, hath ne’er the need to despair, she hath used shameless art . . . to inveigle Love’s dart . . .” He broke off as Celia stiffened. He saw with annoyance that what little attention she had been according him was now withdrawn. He looked around towards a commotion near the door, bowings and hat-doffings to a very tall youth whose curly blond hair foamed around a violet satin hat, pearl-embroidered in the shape of a coronet.
“Aye, forsooth—” said Wyatt, putting down his lute. “His ‘majesty’ deigns to grace our company. We must all make obeisance.”
Celia was not looking at Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devonshire; she was staring at the Benedictine monk who had suddenly appeared from the chapel and was staring at her enigmatically—in fact, so dark and piercing was his gaze that it was as though he had never seen her before.
Wyatt left Celia to greet the Earl. She gave a nervous little laugh as Stephen walked up to her.
“Celia—the wanton and fair—?” he said in an acid tone. “The willing target for Thomas Wyatt’s adulterous musical darts? You’re learning London ways apace, my dear. Soon you’ll paint your mouth scarlet and whiten your paps like the other fine ladies.”
Celia’s mouth tightened, the pupils widened in her azure eyes. “You look as though you detested me,” she whispered. “Brother Stephen . . .” she added half in plea, half in resentment.
Stephen shook himself, but his dark frown continued. “Lady Ursula wants you,” he said coldly. “She’s beckoning. There’re great folk here tonight and you’ll find the revel far merrier than they will.”
“Ah, you know them now—the great folk—” cried Celia angrily. “You’ve been with them daily since we got here. You too have altered, Brother Stephen. You no longer think solely of the offices, and the spiritual care of our household. I note your new gold crucifix. ’Tis a pretty thing.”
Stephen swallowed, his hands itched to shake her. He said stiffly, “The Bishop of Winchester gave me this.” He indicated the crucifix. “And has also shown me practical ways by which the True Faith may be presented in the world.”
“No doubt,” said Celia sweetly. She went over and joined Ursula, who was greeting Gerald Fitzgerald while trying to dampen Mabel’s too obvious rapture. Mabel looked almost pretty, and Gerald with his impish grin seemed glad to see her.
During the elaborate supper Celia was quietly demure. She was seated between a stout elderly knight, Sir John Hutchinson from Lincolnshire, who ate greedily, and Henry Howard, second son to the Duke of Norfolk, a lad of thirteen who also concentrated on devouring the delicacies Anthony had ordered. The jellied capons, the roast quails, the soused pork—marinated in brandy and traditional for the Feast of All Saints. The dishes followed each other fast. The servers rushed along the thirty-foot table. Silver goblets engraved with the buck-head crest were ever left empty of malmsey or claret. Iridescent Venetian glasses bubbled with a fizzy wine from Champagne, into which most of the company spooned quantities of sugar in an endeavor to make the prickly taste palatable.
The Earl of Devonshire headed the table, above Anthony, as another Edward had done at Cowdray barely sixteen months before. Celia examined the tall pretty youth, his air of vapid complacency, his rather foolish smile, and the boorish way in which he speared his meat, splattering sauce on his elegant doublet. She wondered very much why he sat in the carved Chair of State, and timidly asked the knight beside her.
“What ye say?” said Sir John sipping dubiously at the wine from Champagne. “Oh, him! Earl o’ Devon, just let outa the Tower—royal blood, ye know, goin’ to marry the Queen, so I’ve heard. A bit callow, but logical choice—aye, logical choice. She’s gotta wed a royal Englishman. Woman must have a master.”
Celia subsided. The matter did not concern her, she cared nothing about the wedding of the intense middle-aged little woman she had seen first at Hunsdon and then in the procession. She toyed with a fragment of lark pasty, and darted a look at Stephen who sat across the table with two other monks, new friends of his who were chaplains to Bishop Gardiner. Sir John suddenly looked full at Celia and followed her gaze.
“Three black crows—out for the pickings! Like they always were,” he said, shoving his glass aside as he glanced across the table. “Sorry to see ’em back again. Hate Romish trumpery. Bible and a good Englished prayer book’s enough for me. Don’t care who knows it.”
“You’re a Protestant, sir?” cried Celia, so astonished that she dropped her knife. She had never met a Protestant—except Mrs. Potts. “But, they’re wicked heretics!”
“Fiddle-faddle,” said Sir John, and seeing Celia’s horrified expression, suddenly smiled. He craned around Celia and addressed Henry Howard. “What d’ye think, my lord? Ye was raised Protestant, you had that good man, John Foxe, for tutor. Did he teach you wickedness?”
Howard started and blushed. Since the accession of Queen Mary and his father’s reinstatement as the premier Peer of England, Henry had been drilled daily in the iniquitous folly of John
Foxe’s teachings during the five years that the Howard children had been farmed out to their Protestant aunt.
“I like Master Foxe,” he said cautiously, “but it seems he’s misguided.”
Sir John snorted and returned to his soused pork. He had accepted Sir Anthony’s invitation for want of better entertainment that night, and was pleased to find that the food was excellent.
He had also just discovered that the girl on his left was singularly pretty. Fresh and innocent as a primrose, he thought, startled by a flicker of romantic interest such as he had not felt in years.
John Hutchinson was a widower, he had married—long ago—somewhat above his station, a scraggy little cousin of Lord Clinton’s. This connection had abetted his own rugged abilities, and had often been useful in furthering his career as Boston wool merchant, ship owner, and finally Member of Parliament. He was fifty-nine; he had frequent attacks of gout and indigestion, and knew that his days might be numbered. Up to this time, all his energies had been centered on restoring Boston to the prosperity it once enjoyed before plague, famine, and particularly before the effects of King Harry’s debased currency and the general stupidity of Edward’s reign had diminished the port’s usefulness. Sir John had been knighted by King Henry twenty-five years ago, in a casual gesture of recognition for a substantial loan—never repaid—which he had at that time been able to tender the Crown. He knew that his Protestant convictions would be unpopular under the new regime, but it was not in his nature to disguise them. Nor to consider them very important. The business of commerce, the export of Lincolnshire cloth to Antwerp, the constant struggle to best the port of King’s Lynn in the matter of customs levy—these were important, and no whims of a meager middle-aged woman, be she suddenly Queen or not, could sway him.
He put down a spoonful of savory stuffing and suppressed a belch. He suppressed it because of Celia, and wondered why he did so, or why he felt that nothing gross or earthy must offend her.
“You are related to Sir Anthony?” he asked.
Celia answered after a moment; she had stopped trying to watch Stephen and was listening to the minstrels as they played a plaintive new madrigal. “Nay,” she said, looking at him with some sadness. “I am a Bohun, though I live at Cowdray. The land once belonged to my father’s folk, and Sir Anthony has kindly given shelter to my Lady Aunt and me.”
“Aye . . . indeed . . .” Sir John nodded. Pensioners, he thought, dependents. Poor child. Several small inchoate feelings flickered in his mind. There was in him a strain of sentiment, long since sternly diverted to commerce, and blocked forever, he had thought, by the dull weightiness of his body. “Your mother?” he asked softly.
Celia looked up startled. Nobody ever mentioned her mother. “She was a Londoner . . .” said Celia slowly. “Daughter to the landlord at the Golden Fleece, I think. She never told me much, nor often spoke.” Celia’s delicate brows drew together in puzzled dismay. There was so little to remember about Alice in the last years except silent endurance—her being walled off from everyone, including her child. I doubt she really loved me much, Celia thought. How different from Aunt Ursula who kissed, petted, scolded, could be sharp, and even foolish, but underneath there was always a cherishing.
John Hutchinson watched the changing expressions on Celia’s beautiful face, and fell in love, totally, irrevocably. He had fallen in love but once before, forty years ago—Bessie, the baker’s daughter, her chestnut curls, her slumbrous dark eyes, her warm soft body and murmuring sweetness. John had been so besotted over Bessie that his father sent him away to Lincoln, and he had not thought of the heartbreak thereafter until now in Sir Anthony’s priory Hall, when all the poignancies rushed back into an aging heart that resisted as it welcomed them. “Your name, darling?” he whispered. “Your Christian name?”
“Celia, sir,” she answered with a touch of her natural pertness, amused by his suddenly doting gaze. Yet the elderly knight’s shrewd, still bright-blue eyes held a tinge of something more than lechery. There was tenderness, there was protection. Nor did he try to touch her. He smiled gently, and said, “A beautiful name, ‘Celia,’—and one already dear to me.” He turned from her and pushed the wine goblet aside.
She looked at him more attentively. His heavy-jowled ruddy face was clean-shaven in the fashion of his youth, his silvered hair was still thick and dark at his forehead. His mouth was broad and well shaped, since he had had the good fortune to lose no front teeth. He was soberly but expensively dressed in a maroon velvet gown over a plain black velvet doublet; the ruffles around his thick neck were spotless. His large spatulate hands were clean, the nails trimmed and he had a great ruby ring on his thumb. A heavy gold chain ended in a golden sheep—the emblem of his guild—and rested on his substantial paunch.
Did my father look like that? Celia wondered. She remembered little of her father, except that he had been killed in a tavern brawl, and guessed that he could never have exuded this air of solidity and assured worth.
The minstrels finished their madrigal and were quiet while they placed fresh music sheets on the stands. Courtenay’s high whinnying laugh rang out, and all the company looked up the table.
Sir John had no more idea than Celia how shrewdly this revel had been planned to test the wind of opinion as it might be expected to blow from certain quarters. He was no longer mildly speculative about the gathering. His business sense had vanished, and though he did not look at her again, his thoughts were entirely on the girl beside him, who—mildly disappointed by the knight’s silence—exchanged a few banal remarks with young Lord Henry Howard.
It was fortunate that the Queen was ailing again, and canceling all Court functions had retired to St. James’s Palace. She would not have approved Anthony’s plan because she was incapable of seeing any flaws in her own passionate intent. Her advisors knew the dangers, though they were uncertain how great these might be. Bishop Gardiner, Mary’s new Lord Chancellor, had rather unwillingly acceded to the experiment. He would not come himself tonight but sent the chaplains.
Anthony leaned back in his chair, and quelled uneasiness by trying to forecast his guests’ reactions to the land mine he and Heywood, with Stephen’s help, had prepared.
There was Sir Henry Sidney of Penshurst—the poor little King’s closest friend—uncertain. Sidney was unobtrusively Protestant, he had declared for Jane Grey, the wife to his brother-in-law Guilford Dudley—both these young Pretenders were still in the Tower. True, Queen Mary had forgiven Sidney, who had rushed to her side declaring allegiance after the tide turned at Framlingham, but he had altered from the merry youth who had truly loved Edward. His demeanor had grown solemn, forbidding. He was no longer popular at Court.
Then there was Gerald Fitzgerald, now whispering to Mabel, a quizzical look on his cocky young face. He was probably certain though the Clintons had politely refused to attend Anthony’s revel. Geraldine would be waiting to see where the cat pounced next.
And then—Anthony looked further down the table. Sir Thomas Wyatt. Extremely uncertain. Wyatt had been incredibly rash and hotheaded in his youth. He had fought abroad, and was reputed to be a superb soldier. A sojourn in Spain, where he was threatened by the Inquisition for heresy, had resulted in outspoken hatred for the Spanish. Recent information had come to Bishop Gardiner—via a dismissed stableboy whose right hand Sir Thomas had ordered cut off for stealing—that the rich Kentish knight had made invidious remarks about the Queen’s Spanish mother. Wyatt was also known to be often closeted with Courtenay.
Dull provincial bellwethers like Sir John, the undoubted Protestant sitting beside Celia, and other manor lords of either religion who represented England’s provincial squirearchy—well, they were most uncertain, but would probably follow the ingrained tradition of loyalty to the Crown.
The two key ambassadors were present, since neither ever let the other out of his sight if possible.
De Noailles of France—aristocratic, debonair and a far more impressive figure than Charles th
e Fifth’s ambassador, Simon Renard. Renard’s name suited him. He was a wily, grizzled old fox, small and cunning. He wore an air of smugness tonight from which Anthony guessed that the ambassador somehow knew the true purpose of the revel.
And on my right, thought Anthony ruefully, glancing up at Courtenay—is the favored candidate of the English people, may the Blessed Virgin save us! The newly restored Earl of Devon was tall and fair; he showed his royal Plantagenet descent, which ancestry was precisely the reason King Henry had clapped him in the Tower fifteen years earlier. From the Tower he had just emerged—uncouth and untutored as a hound puppy, yet vain and prideful as a peacock. Anthony’s polite attempts at conversation during supper had been met with vacant stares or unmanly titters. Courtenay’s one contribution had been a lewd anecdote about buggery with a sheep which might have amused a boy of ten. Though much could be excused by the years of confinement, Anthony found him a singularly disagreeable young man.
John Heywood suddenly approached, bowing. “All is ready, Sir Anthony.” He quirked a grizzled eyebrow. “Full bellies empty the head, and I’ve stuffed mine, so I doubt me skill, or their understanding.” He patted his paunch, then waved a plump hand towards the guests. “A bit o’ dancing first to liven ’em?”
“No,” said Anthony smiling, “we’ll on wi’ the show.” He gave orders to his servants, and rising, said in a loud carrying voice, looking at Courtenay, “My Lord of Devonshire an’ it be your pleasure, I’ve arranged for you to view a novelty brought to our realm by Master Heywood.”
“Aye, marry . . . to be sure . . .” stammered the young Earl, after a bewildered moment. He made a royal gesture recently taught him by the French ambassador, and caressed his curly golden beard, “Certes, certes,” he added haughtily, “it is our pleasure.”
De Noailles sent the young man a look of approval, and a second glance towards Ambassador Renard, his opponent in the delicate jockeyings on behalf of their respective countries.